Cactus Communications (CACTUS), a technology company accelerating scientific advancement, has become one of the first companies in India to transition to remote first. That means, its 1,200 employees will be able to work from anywhere. The Company has headquarters in nine locations globally.
“Three hundred and twenty people joined CACTUS in the seven months leading up to October 2021, and 50 per cent of our new hires are from locations where we don’t have physical offices, such as Jaipur, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad, Chennai, Kolkata, Pune, and many others,” says Yashmi Pujara, chief human resources officer, CACTUS.
Jason Morwick has been hired as the head of remote first, a new position created by the Company.
“Businesses cannot replicate what they used to do face-to-face over a video call,” says Morwick. Recalling how people used to gather in a room in front of a whiteboard to discuss an idea or problem, he admits that this “rarely works over a video call”.
Now, he informs, that the Company is revising the process and manner of developing solutions. “If done correctly, we believe that we can accelerate our business decision-making while engaging a larger number of employees.”
Cactus seeks to expand its recruitment across the globe, and pioneer novel post-pandemic work practices, including work from anywhere, and asynchronous communication. Furthermore, it hopes to create more employment opportunities for people who reside in small towns, where chances of getting work are scarce and migrating to other cities for work is a challenge.
Cactus conducted a survey to understand what kind of workplace employees preferred. The results showed that 86 per cent of the employees desired flexibility in terms of how and where they worked, while 38 per cent still preferred full-time remote work. A core team communicated with other remote-first companies to absorb the best work practices, and then worked on different practices —introducing virtual water cooler events and virtual whiteboards, making a communications charter, designating remote champions, developing guidelines on asynchronous communication, and launching a remote-first handbook.
